Svarti Daudhi? Why Do They Call It That?

Okay, before I get into the events of yesterday evening and today, I want to show off some of my pictures from yesterday's dives. Since I was unable to post any pictures with yesterday's update, here's Silfra. I think you'll find these pictures a bit better than the previous day's offering:

There you have it folks. THAT is why I came to Iceland! Everything else is just gravy at this point. It's pretty delicious gravy mind you. I've already decided that this is not going to be the last time that I find myself on Icelandic soil. Once I've got a group together I'm coming back and doing a driving tour so that I can see more than just what can be reached in a day-trip from Reykjavik.

Now, on to this Culture Night phenomenon. It's, as the name implies, a celebration of culture. Music, art, food, it's all out on display, and this apparently attracts about half of Iceland to descend upon Reykjavik as evidenced in the photo below:

If you'd like some contrast, here's what that same street looked like this morning:

The whole affair was absolutely manic. Tons of streets were blocked off, and everywhere you turned there were food stalls, and musicians on stages. In the big square near my guesthouse there was a group of guys playing jazz on a huge stage. A little way down the road I started to hear some hard rock being played, and turned down a small side street to find a tiny stage with a few guys rocking out. Down another small street I came across a local tattoo parlor where the local motorcycle club had put their bikes on display for everyone to see, with a rock trio playing songs from the roof. Further down I discovered someone selling samosas, and a rap duo performing the first bit of Icelandic rap I'd ever heard.

I popped into a pub to grab a beer and ended up chatting with a fellow Canadian who's been living in Iceland for the past 8 years. If any of you are looking for help planning a trip to Iceland have a chat with Kent at nordictrails.org and he'll help you out! I decided to stick around for another beer before the festival's fireworks display started, but first I thought I'd better try the local spirit, Brennivin. That's literally translated as "burn wine" but it's also commonly referred to as Svarti Daudhi, the Black Death. It's a schnapps made from potatoes and flavoured with caraway. I actually found it quite pleasant, but that could have been the fact that it kicked me in the head so hard that I lost some of my sense of taste. Following it up with two more beers and then calling it a night should not have made me feel as rotten as I did this morning... but there you have it. Actually, I just get headaches out of the blue, but still, when I do I need something to blame, and Brennivin seems a convenient scapegoat at this point.

That brings me to my next fun fact. If you are travelling to Iceland, bring a small med kit. Actually, that's sensible advice no matter where you go, and I'm very foolish for not following that particular traveller's law myself. I'm not just suggesting the med kit for Iceland because some Brennivin might sneak up from behind and cudgel you senseless either. You never know when you might need painkillers, antihistamines, etc. and unlike in Canada, you can't just drop by the grocery store and pick some up. As far as I've been able to tell even a simple painkiller can only be obtained from the pharmacy, and the only one I could find wasn't open on the weekends. So I had a bit of a long morning until I'd consumed enough caffeinated beverages to straighten myself out.

Not that I was about to let a slight headache slow me down! This morning after I'd grabbed a quick bite to eat I set out to the harbour in search of the flea market where Kent said I stood my best chance of finding hákarl, the fermented shark delicacy for which Iceland is famous in the culinary world. I wandered around for awhile without seeing anything before returning to my room to consult my guidebook. I could have sworn that I'd seen some mention of it in there, but alas, I could seem to find in anywhere in the book when it really counted. Unfortunately that's a weekend-only thing, so I've missed any shot I would have had of checking it out. With any luck I'll still be able to find some hákarl, but my searches of the local supermarkets have yet to yield positive results.

Having failed in that mission I decided to go checkout Reykjavik 871 ± 2. It's a display of the remains of an early Viking longhouse, and the name comes from the fact that they've estimated the date of the settlement at the year 871 AD, with a margin of error of 2 years. It's an interesting story; the longhouse had fallen into disuse, collapsed, and been buried in volcanic ash many years ago. As Reykjavik built up a building was constructed over the site. Then, in the year 2000 an expansion was proposed to the building which involved construction on the foundation. That's when the ruins were discovered, and the Icelandic people's love of their heritage really shines through. Rather than destroy the ruins, or scrape the building plan, they set to work unearthing the ruins, preserving them as best they could, and then simply built the basement of the new building around them, turning that into a cultural museum and allowing construction of the building to continue. Real genius. It's not a huge exhibit and won't take you long to tour through, but it's incredible to see what they've accomplished from an archaeological perspective, and it's completely free to enter.

After that I grabbed some lunch and then grabbed a bus down to Perlan ("The Pearl" in English) for a tour of the Saga Museum. It's a brief discussion of the history of Iceland, with eerily lifelike models adding a visual aid to the story. Here's an example of the one of the displays:

They had a video of how it was all put together, and the whole process was very familiar, having already experimented with the techniques before. The reason that these statues look so lifelike is that they are actually built from algenate moulds taken from real people. It's a technique that Graydyn and I experimented with in an attempt to make Halloween masks one year. It was pretty cool to watch it being done as a full-scale operation.

While at Perlan I went up to their observation deck, which allows a 360 view of Reykjavik from a great vantage point:

Perlan itself is quite interesting, as it's the main distribution point for Reykjavik's hot water. It's something that David described to me on the way to our first dive on Thursday. Apparently the Icelandic people have no need of hot water heaters since the country is riddled with sites where water is bubbling out of the ground a near-boiling temperatures anyway. For Reykjavik this geothermally heated water is just pumped to Perlan and then distributed to the city. I was happy to learn this on Thursday, since I'd wondered why the hot water in my shower smelled so much like Sulfur. Apparently this is pretty standard in Iceland.

Another fun thing to do at the Perlan is to just go for a walk from there. There's a warren of trails running for miles out from the South and East of Perlan. I didn't go too far, but it was a fun walk all the same. Everyone fixates on the bleak, alien landscape that's so typical of Iceland, and they forget that there are still small pockets like this:

It actually reminded me a bit of Canada. There aren't many trees in Iceland, but they are certainly there.

Well, I'm going to go find something for dinner, and then call it an early night. It's up early again tomorrow for my glacier tour. I'm expecting that to be a fairly full day since we're going to Langjökull, which is considerably further away than any of the dive sites I've been too. I'm anticipating a fairly long, but very interesting drive up there. If I'm not too late getting back tomorrow I'll jump on and post some pictures. Adios for now.